Anthropology
The woman was laid on a bed of specially selected materials, including gazelle horn cores, fragments of chalk, fresh clay, limestone blocks and sediment. Tortoise shells were placed under and around her body, 86 in total. Sea shells, an eagle's wing, a leopard's pelvis, a forearm of a wild boar and even a human foot were placed on the body of the mysterious 1.5 meter-tall woman. Atop her body, a large stone was laid to seal the burial space.
It was not an ordinary funeral, said the Hebrew University archeologist who discovered the grave in a cave site on the bank of the Hilazon river in the…
In the modern schism between religion and science promoted by militants, it may not seem like theology is a friend to ecology. But, like in all other areas of science, that is just modern spin created by people who need to promote that culture war for their own ends. Including in environmentalism, where religion is portrayed as a conservative trait.
In actuality, Christian theologians contributed significantly to early ecological thought, much like they participated in every facet of culture. They recognized that human activity changes the natural environment and therefore…
Rice farming is a far older practice than we knew. The oldest evidence of domesticated rice in China has now been pushed back to 9,000 years ago, thanks to a team of archaeologists.
Working with the Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Zhejiang Province, China, the team found the ancient domesticated rice fragments in a probable ditch in the lower Yangtze valley. They observed that about 30 percent of the rice plant material - primarily bases, husks and leaf epidermis - were not wild, but showed signs of being purposely cultivated to produce rice plants that were durable…
Euthanasia with the use of physicians is supported by a majority of California and Hawaii residents, regardless of their ethnicity - as reliable as an Internet survey can be, that is.
Older people were more likely than younger people to feel it is acceptable for physicians, who obey the Hippocratic oath, to prescribe life-ending drugs for terminally ill patients who request them. Even among people who consider themselves spiritual or religious, about 52 percent supported the practice.
The survey results will be published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine to coincide with the date that…
Heralded on the cover of Time magazine in 2000 as a genetically modified (GMO) crop with the potential to save millions of lives in the Third World, Golden Rice is still years - and millions of dollars in anti-science activism - away from field introduction. Vitamin A deficiencies leave millions at high risk for infection, diseases and other maladies, such as blindness, and Golden Rice produces the micronutrient beta carotene, so it is basically fortified, but using a natural process that increases Vitamin A rather than an additive.
Regardless of that altruistic foundation, GMOs…
Infant formula was the great liberator for working moms who wanted to have careers but in the last decade there has been a backlash against it, often adopting the veil of scientific legitimacy.
But the same flawed epidemiology that leads activists at the International Agency for Research on Cancer to declare hot dogs and coffee carcinogens is also used to declare that babies will be dumber or less healthy unless they are breastfed. If you don't breastfeed, you are a bad mom, is the implication. While it has often been considered just shoddy, agenda-based misuse of health statistics,…
Warning: this article contains spoilers for those not up to date with Game of Thrones season six.
Events in HBO’s Game of Thrones TV series have got people talking about what it means to return from the dead. But while resurrection appears to be a very real possibility for some of the religions of mythical Westeros – not least Jon Snow’s resurrector, the “red priestess”, Melisandre – what can the Bible add to the discussion?
In fact, coming back from the dead was a fairly rare event around the time of Jesus. Very few ancient Greeks and Romans ever managed to make it out of Hades, but those…
Recent years have seen claims that a “national sex revolution” is well underway in China and that it has “has reached a point of no return”. But according to my new research looking at the views of people across China on sex, this is going too far.
In 1989, only 15% of people in China had sex before marriage. This rocketed to 40% in 1994 and 71% in 2012 with 4.5% of married women and 16.5% of men admitting to having had sex with someone other than their spouse. Estimates indicate that about 3-5% of the Chinese population are homosexual, and that around 11% of unmarried men and 5.8% of married…
Every "Game of Thrones" season premiere needs its shock reveal – and season six is no different. As the name of the episode – The Red Woman – hints, this one pertains to red priestess Melisandre, to whom, it turns out, there’s much more than meets the eye (don’t worry, no spoilers ensue). Even in a series known for its complex characters and even more complicated morality, Melisandre and her motives remain surprisingly opaque. And it looks as if her story’s only just getting started.
Admired by some, loathed by others, and feared by many, she was the driving force behind Stannis Baratheon’s…
In the Middle Ages, women became important for the development of piano composition and play. But why?
There have long been rules and conventions regarding what women can and can’t do in the world of music at all times. Straddling the legs around a cello was considered immoral, for example, and so sitting by the piano became what ladies did. By the 19th century, almost every piano composition was written for women and girls.
“Women’s piano playing has had enormous significance for the development of piano composition,” argues Lise Karin Meling, associate professor at the…